Washington, D.C., October 17, 2011 – Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., CEI President Fred L. Smith[2] will join U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), along with Laura W. Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union and James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy & Technology, in a press conference on Capitol Hill to discuss locational privacy and reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act[3]. ECPA, the primary federal law governing law enforcement access to private information was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan 25 years ago this week.

Sen. Wyden recently introduced legislation, the GPS Act[4], that would require the government to obtain a warrant before requiring a mobile phone provider to disclose a user’s locational information. The GPS Act, which is cosponsored by[5] U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), would mark a significant step forward in modernizing ECPA to reflect the realities of the 21st century.

Groups co-sponsoring the media conference include the ACLU, Americans for Tax Reform, the Center for Democracy & Technology, The Constitution Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and TechFreedom.